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Banquet Speech

Sir Frederick Hopkins's speech at the Nobel
Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1929

Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nobel Laureates are greatly privileged. Their privileges, I
venture to say, begin with the invitation to Stockholm, and with
the circumstances which meet them there. Stockholm takes care
that a fitting stage is provided for the conferment of honours
which carry such lasting prestige.

A student of civilisation who visits this
City for the first time realises that his education had till then
been incomplete. It is not alone the great beauty of her
situation, - nor even this combined with the thrilling successes
of her modern architects and her to-day's intensive enterprises,
- which causes Stockholm to make so unique an impression. It is
something that has yet deeper foundations. If I may give humble
expression to a personal feeling, I would say that it is because,
more than other Capitals, Stockholm expresses the genius of a
race; the very spirit of the great northern race which has slowly
created her.

For the Nobel Prize-winner the privileges
of a visit to Stockholm receive a manifold increase. He ceases,
indeed, for the time, to feel mortal! Surely nowhere, and at no
time, have honours been conferred upon individuals with greater
generosity of effort, or with ceremonies more full of artistic
fitness, than Stockholm provides for these occasions. The
treatment enjoyed by Laureates would surely have given pleasure
to him whose testament was the origin of all such efforts, to him
who was a man of imagination as well as a man of affairs.

Even Stockholm with all her distinctions
must feel that she gains prestige from the circumstance that
within her boundaries is administered, with meticulous care and
with a justice which transcends all narrow national
considerations, so great a trust as that created by the testament
of Alfred Nobel. The administration of that Trust does more than
reward individual efforts. Its magnificently generous policy
stirs the imagination of all countries. Year by year it reminds a
world too prone to be indifferent to such matters that the
advance of knowledge, the glory of literature, and the advent of
peace must depend upon individual efforts, and that rewards may
be due, and are to be won, which are not those of the marketplace
or the political arena.

In acknowledging my own great good fortune
as a chosen Laureate I cannot refrain from referring to the
circumstance that the subject I profess, the comparatively young
science of Biochemistry, has this year, in effect if not by name,
received no less than four Nobel prizes. Those allotted to
Medicine, and no less those to Chemistry, have been awarded for
researches all of which were essentially contributions to
Biochemistry!

I have called it a young science; but it is
after all not so young, though its phase of vigorous progress is
recent. A century ago Stockholm was already seeing the beginnings
of modern Biochemistry. A hundred years ago Berzelius, having
attained to leisure by resigning - I think - his chief duties at
the Caroline Institute (I must be careful in my statements since
Professor Söderbaum is present), was seeing through the
Press the proofs of his "Thierchemie". Indeed, exactly one
hundred years ago to the very day, Wöhler, who, as you know,
had been Berzelius's devoted pupil and assistant, wrote from
Berlin to the great Swede in Stockholm a letter dated December
10th 1829 in which he acknowledges the receipt of proofs of part
of the "Thierchemie". To say the truth, Wöhler proceeds in
this letter to sympathise with its author for having to deal with
such a tangle of chemistry, anatomy, physiology and unproven data
as the subject then comprised. One would like to know how
Wöhler would appraise the subject to-day; and I wonder (as
many must have wondered) what would have been the emotions of
Berzelius could he have foreseen all the benefits that chemical
science was to receive in these later days from the city of his
own activities.

I have spoken as a biochemist, but I must
remember that in the regretted absence of Professor Eijkman I am
the sole representative of the Laureates for Medicine. The
progress of Biochemistry, it must be admitted, has become one of
the chief contributions to the progress of modern Medicine.
Speaking for the moment on behalf of the latter, I should like to
bear witness to the wide recognition in England of our debt to
Sweden. It is recognised, to take but one instance, that in the
technique of the curative use of radium Stockholm has led the
world and taught lessons to all. When, this afternoon, I received
from His Majesty the tokens of Laureateship, I realised afresh
how little I had expected the honour, and I was led to ask
myself, not for the first time, the perhaps debatable question:
Are honours and rewards the more desirable in the days of full
vigour or after most of one's work is done? I am not sure that
the more obvious answer is the right one. Youth, it is true,
needs sustenance, but should need no tonic. The pulse of age may
be quickened by the recognition of past efforts and unsuspected
capacity for further effort thus revealed. I myself, at any rate,
rejoice in the moment of my good fortune. The great gift from
Sweden awakens my deepest gratitude.